


Forged from the Ashes

by chesterfieldred



Category: A Nightmare on Elm Street - All Media Types, Freddy vs. Jason (2003), Friday the 13th Series (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, All the warnings, Alternate Universe, Angst, Bullying, Child Murder, Childhood Trauma, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drowning, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, Freddy just wants to be left alone and murder people, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It Gets Worse, Jason is a Disney Princess, M/M, Murder, Oh so very much AU, PTSD everywhere, Pamela is a badass, Past Rape/Non-con, Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Revenge, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, backstory exploration, buckle up folks this is gonna be a long one, not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-10-25 04:23:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20718029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chesterfieldred/pseuds/chesterfieldred
Summary: Jason knew the unbearable red nightmares of fire and pain he had every night were not his own. No, not nightmares. Memories. And they were calling him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really have no idea. This kinda just started and developed a mind on its own. And then it grew into a friggin' monster that took over my life. Massively AU, but follows the movie Freddy vs. Jason. Timeline is a bit blurry though, especially on the Nightmare on Elm Street side. Well... both franchises have logic holes the size of the Bering Strait, so I don't feel that guilty for scrambling them even further. No native english speaker here, so forgive me for my mistakes. This is not related to my other Freddy vs. Jason fic. Enjoy!

Prologue

••••

No one would save him.

Looking through another ones' eyes, he was falling into an abysmal chasm, an endless well of pain, filled with fire and the lights of hell, with visions of madness and blood. His skin, his flesh were singed away in the blazing inferno, a thousand voices roaring in his ears, too loud to be understood but scorching into his brain, setting him aflame from the inside out.

There wasn't even a shred of thought, every last remnant of conciousness scorched away, going under in an endless sea of pain and hate and fire. He was drowning in it and it burned, it burned so much, he breathed white-hot molten metal and the stench-

_Please! Oh God, please!_

But God had forsaken him, Hell itself had spat him out, there was nothing, nothing, only the fire and it would never end until all that remained were ashes and bones. 

_Help me!_

•••

Jason sat up abruptly and the old wooden bed under him creaked dangerously. His undead heart was beating frantically against his ribcage, his head was splitting in two, sharp pain flaring in his temple and it took a while for him to understand that the noise he was hearing was himself, a shaky, low whine straining from his unused vocal chords.

Slowly, the massive man turned to look at the open door. Faint morning light spilled through uneven gaps of rotten wood, filling the old shack he called his home with an eerie twilight. 

A shadow moved in the doorway and Jason reached for his machete instinctively until the shadow outside lifted its head and he recognized it as a deer. The animal stared at him for a moment with black eyes and Jason didn't move. It must have smelled him, or sensed him, for a shudder ran through the lithe form a heartbeat later, muscles rippling under brown fur and then it was off into the woods. 

He stared until he couldn't hear it anymore before finally grasping the weapon and standing. 

His breathing was normal again, the pain in his head subsiding. The noises from inside himself had stopped. But he could still smell cinder and burnt flesh.

He stepped outside. There was a faint mist between the trees and covering the lake as far as he could see. The only trees that still had leaves this time of the year were the high fir trees on the other side of the lake, a black band in the distance. The air felt wet and cold, but it was fresh and flushed the smell of ashes from his nose.

Dead leaves crunched under his boots when he started towards the lake. More critters lurked here, a family of racoons that lived in the huge dead tree, hedgehogs searching for food and large black birds with long beaks in the treetops, whose names he had forgotten, that argued over a dead mouse.

He had forgotten so much over time.

Little things and large things, names and places and faces. 

_Don't worry, my dear. You will never forget me._

No. No, he wouldn't.

He stopped at the waters edge. The lakes surface was a polished mirror, dark clouds illuminated by the rising sun reflecting on seemingly endless crystal glass. It was always like this, in the early mornings when there was no rain, and Jason just stood there, looking at two skys until the last stars vanished, until the sun had wandered over the mountains in the distance and yellow and red gold cascaded over the water. 

The flaming light had him remember the dream. The eyes he had looked through. The vivid images. The anguished cries that weren't his own. He had never dreamed like this before and he frowned behind his mask. He would only ever dream of one thing, always had, of that one day and the lake, the black abyss under him, water filling his lungs when he tried to breathe, the taunting, hateful voices just above the surface, calling him foul names. The last cry for help, for his mother who wasn't there.

_I am here. I am always here, my special, special boy._

Yes. She was. He pushed the dark memories away with a shudder and turned bruskly.

A well worn path along the lakeside led him towards old, decaying cabins. Chanterelles were growing in the damp moss along the way and a few toadstools scattered here and there whose red caps looked wet with morning dew. She had always told him not to touch those because they were bad for him and he still hadn't all these years later. 

The camp was abandoned. He made his round and checked on the various bear traps hidden under leaves to make sure they were still working. Most of them were old and rusty, but reliable. They looked like they hadn't been moved in years and maybe that was true. 

Jason couldn't remember how long he had been here, now, undisturbed. He knew there had been a time when many, many people had come. When he had to kill them. And even before that, when he still had to hunt to eat or walk all day to reach the town to take food and tools and gasoline at night when everybody else was asleep. He didn't need to do these things anymore. 

Now, the camp was always empty. Always desolate.

_Like it should be, darling._

When he was finished he walked towards the lake again, passing the life-guard tower were the old white paint was flaking off the brittle wood in large chunks and the boat house, where the roof had caved in during the last thunderstorm. A light wind had picked up. Jason watched over the lake, remembering the dream and someone elses cries.

•••


	2. Chapter 2

He walked on an endless path made of rust and steam. 

The air around him was boiling, condensation searing on every surface. Each raspy breath from his burnt lungs would have been agony if it had been anything more than a subconcious, remnant mannerism from another life. 

Sharp metal claws emitted sparks everytime they scraped incidentally over a railing, a metal crate on the wall or rusted pipes, searching, always searching for a crack, those familiar disruptions, anything that would give, rotten stripes he could tear off like old wallpaper. He would walk into one crack and out the other, from one fabricated reality to the next, if only he could find a weakness. He longed for it. He knew what was waiting behind the endless boiler room, a shifting mosaic, a kaleidoscope of minds, a mirrored maze in a never-ending carnival, the dreams, the thoughts and emotions and whole worlds, all moving into one another. The souls that would feed the hunger.

But not for him. Not anymore. This was the bitter taste of oblivion. 

Freddy sneered at the uncomfortable thought and walked past unyielding rusty pipes and concrete walls, deeper, always deeper, into the ever changing, ever growing labyrinth. There had to be a way, somewhere. Someone had to remember him, just a spark, a tiny flicker would be enough. He just had to keep looking.

He didn't know how much time had passed since he had woken again, since that stupid imbecile had ruined everything, ending with him getting speared on his own weapon and decapitated. He had healed, of course, here in his world, but that could have been yesterday or several decades ago. Time had no meaning here, simply another, unnecessary leftover from before everything. 

It didn't matter, anyway. None of it. He arrived at that one dead end like he always would, sooner or later. It always lead back to this, inevitably.

He stopped before the grotesquely large boiler with an endless amount of pipes leading into the myriads of tunnels and hallways around him, vanishing into red darkness. Like a heart, a deformed, mutiliated organ, and the closer he got the louder a dull, ominous beating sounded, somewhere in the distance and inside of his head at once, scrapping at the forefront of his mind. Fire was burning in the boiler and he stopped in front of the oversized grate, watching the flames.

_Weak~_

He sneered. This again.

_Pathetic~_

Freddy bared his teeth in rage. He tried. He searched so hard. He had told them before, countless times, but it wasn't what they wanted to hear. 

Flames so hot they turned blue burst forth when the grate snapped open on its own, the crudely welded bars glowing white, the heat becoming unbearable.

"They forget," Freddy hissed at the fire, "They forget me and they won't fear me, I told you. There is no way out."

_Make them fear you, then. This why you are still here after all~_

"How?!," he snarled, ignoring the flames licking at his sweater, "The last time was a desaster, you know that! This fuckin' retard-"

_Forget him. You don't need anyone. You are enough. You are the Nightmare~_

"Making this easy on yourself, aren't you? How about a little help-"

The fire flared up again, scorching heat against his ruined skin.

_We created you, we gave you your strength, for one purpose only. We can take it back~_

"Who do you think I am, your fuckin' dog you taught how to fetch?" He spat, claws twitching spasmodically, uselessly at his side, "I cannot get out! There is no way out of here and it is not my goddamn fault!"

The fire got so bright, so hot, that he had to look away. Impotent rage was seething in his veins, just for a heartbeat, until it burned out again. It was of no use. No matter what he said, they would not listen. And he had wanted it, after all, he had told them the day he had burned. He had given them his word.

The flames shrunk, their heat conciliatory. 

_Your hunger is ours. You will find a way. You will sate it. And we are tired of waiting~_

Freddy clenched his jaw until it hurt before turning abruptly and vanishing into the maze without another word. That warning had been clear. He had to keep searching.

The flames behind him burned brightly. 

•••

His body was not his own again, fragmented shards of his being embedded under the other ones' skin.

He was running in an endless, dark tunnel and there was no escape. Old lamps swung over his head, their weak red light mere sickening blotches inbetween the darkness. His lungs were burning with every painfully drawn breath, his legs were so tired and he just wanted to stop and lay down. He couldn't. He couldn't stop. They would get him. Fear, so much fear, terror flooding his veins, choking him. 

He raced around a sharp corner and almost lost his balance, catching himself on his hands, clawing forward. His palms and knees scraped open on the rough concrete in his blind panic to get away and he didn't care, he couldn't care, he had to _move_-

Something caught his leg, something with sharp claws, and it sliced his calf open. He screamed in anguish when hot pain exploded up his leg and he fell. There were greedy hands on him immediately, grasping, clawing, scraping up his body and he struck out blindly. Crying out he scrambled back until he hit a wall and they were still touching him, scratching, chrushing, holding him down.

The red light above him swayed. 

A shadow rose in front of him, a grotesque monster materializing from the darkness itself. And when it looked at him, when he saw the holes were eyes should have been, he _screamed_.

•••

Somewhere in Cunningham County, New Jersey, Jason woke disoriented, a cry full of excrutiating agony still echoing in his ears. In his chest was a desperate, strong urge to _go_, to _move_, blood pounding in his head, a piercing, drilling pain originating from his left temple, calling him away.

He was up in a heartbeat and a few steps out of his home until he recognized his surroundings. Looking around wildly he saw no threat, no immediate danger. There was nothing, only the silent, dark forest, the lake and the stars above.

But ... he had wanted to go somewhere. Hadn't he? To where? Who had called him?

He could not remember anymore.

He remembered the awful dream, though, vivid and in detail, so strong that his blood still felt like boiling, head pounding with pain. It had felt so real, like so much more. 

A sharp sensation flared through his leg. He looked down. The dark pants he wore had been sliced open at his right calf. Coagulated blood dripped down a deep cut in the grey flesh. He stared uncomprehendingly at the slowly forming puddle under his feet, seeping into the earth like viscous syrup, until the wound closed itself like it always did. 

This was not right. This was not right at all. What was happening?

Jason turned and walked back inside, to the only person he could ask. The only person who always knew what to do and who could explain everything so he would understand.

The candles had almost burned down, their warmth soothing and calm, tinging the darkness in dancing yellow light. 

He stood in front of her, watching her familiar, beloved features in the soft light, hoping she could help.

_What is it, my dear?_

He explained, as best as he could, showing her the memories of the nightmares.

Her anger was growing like a dark stormcloud, ominous and dark. It filled the whole cabin with a terrifying energy, threatening to unleash any moment at whoever was unfortunate enough to be in its way. Jason felt as if he was shrinking. But she was not angry at him.

_My poor baby. Don't be afraid, Mommy will handle this. I won't let anyone hurt you, sweetheart._

Jason looked up at her, thankful, the turmoil in his chest calming down again, his awful headache vanishing. Her words were so very soothing, so sweet, the sound of her voice alone being enough to chase away every nightmare, every ugly memory, wrapping around him like the warm hug that she could not give him anymore. She had always hugged him, a long time ago, every night he had had a bad dream or when there had been a storm and he was afraid of the thunder. She had hugged him and sung a song for him and he would always be safe with her.

The first candle went out with a small, unnoticeable flicker. 

_Shall I sing you a song, my darling? So you can sleep?_

Jason looked to his right. There in the corner was his old, rotten bed, plunged in the warm, yellow light. Hesitantly, he walked over to it and sank down on the matress. He looked at her and nodded.

Slowly he lay down, eyes never leaving her face. She started to sing, so very gently, like she had done when he had been younger, her warm voice covering him like a blanket. 

He felt safe, and slowly, slowly, he drifted off to sleep. 

•••

He could hear the wind in the trees and an old song. He knew the words by heart. There was nothing here, though, nothing but the figure in front of him. The other one.

Blinding white light illuminated the sillouhette and no matter how fast he moved, the other one was faster. 

There was a frontier, an invisible barrier he could not cross. He was afraid to, for he knew terrible, terrible things awaited him beyond.

The figure walked into the light and the old song faded away.

He was alone.

He had never felt so alone in all his life.

•••

Jason came to again, shivering, ice-cold and rigid like a corpse, a horrendous, awful emptiness gaping in his chest like an endless black hole.

With inhuman effort, he opened his eyes. 

All of the candles had been extinguished. 

Her voice was gone.

•••


	3. Chapter 3

These fucking _bastards_.

Freddy clenched his jaw and struck out with his claws randomly, cutting into metal pipes and the walls while he paced through the endless cellar rooms, sparks flying each time he hit something. 

How he longed for those tiny, bright specks to be drops of blood instead, soft chunks of flesh, and he didn't care of whom. Anyone would have sufficed by now. He wanted to hear screams again. Maybe they would distract him from this goddamn headache that pestered him for a while now, agonizingly pulsing behind his forehead.

He hated this, this endless loop he was stranded in, this monotony, the boredom with just them for company, he hated, hated, _hated it_.

And _them_, so very much. All of their blame, all of the thinly veiled threats and lies. They had promised him and now he was stuck here, in this never-ending hellhole without any hope of ever finding a way out. And they had the audacity-

It wasn't his fault! No. It had been that goddamn bitch and her fucking boyfriend. 

And the _retard_.

Freddy felt his blood boil at the thought of him and he snarled in rage. He struck out with his claws, severing a large pipe clean in the middle. Dirty water sloshed out over the concrete floor, thick and viscous like tar.

This stupid, idiotic, dumb as fuck imbecile!

How he wished to find him again just to sink his claws into his throat and rip it out, rip and slash and tear everything, painting that stupid mask a lovely, lovely red. 

He would get his chance. He had to. 

He would get out of here.

And then he would find that moron and have a little fun.

•••

Jason didn't understand. 

Nothing, nothing made sense anymore. His whole world lay fractured and broken in front of him and he didn't know how to make it whole again. 

She was gone. Her voice had fallen silent.

She had _left_ him.

He could feel the empty, glaringly empty space in his chest like it had been ripped open and someone had pushed a knife through his heart. It hurt so much. 

Pale blue moonlight fell through the naked trees, the stars only cold needles in the vast night sky.

He had rounded the lake twice after waking, the abandoned camp, every single old cabin, searching, choking on bitter desperation.

There was no one. He was all alone.

The forest was silent. Deadly, deadly silent and he screamed inside his head at the lakeside, his legs giving way and his body crumbling, collapsing to his knees on the waters' edge.

Why had she left him? Why? She was the only one, his whole reason for being.

He stared at the still and shallow water in front of him. A white blotch was staring back from the depth, dark, round holes instead of eyes and it reminded him of the nightmare, the monster in the darkness. 

He looked away.

Slowly, he reached up and pulled off his mask, turning it in his hands. 

The white had faded to a dirty yellow. The red streaks were chapped, flaking off the plastic. The hard leather straps were cracked. The whole thing looked old and worn and he gently swiped his fingers over the protuding nose ridge. There was a tremor in his large hands.

Slowly, hesitantly, Jason looked at the reflecting surface of the lake again. He had not looked at himself for a long, long while. 

... He had forgotten so much over time. Little things and large things, names and places and faces. 

But not his own. Even after what seemed like an eternity. A horryfing visage stared back at him, a grotesque caricature of a human face. Ugly, so very ugly, awful and terrifying.

She had always told him not to be ashamed. That he was wonderful like he was, that she loved him like he was. 

Her special, special boy.

And now... 

He pulled the mask over his face again, standing up slowly. His whole body was shaking, exhausted to the core. The hole in his chest was hurting, his head pounding again, pain pulsating behind his eyelids.

What was he going to do now?

He turned and the world tilted under him. 

The sky was falling and the ground rushed up to him. Everything turned dark.

•••

Jason was plunged into a blood-red inferno. He wanted to scream but he breathed only fire, collapsing lungs unable to form any sound over the roaring of flames. His body burned, skin and flesh all but melting from his bones. It was a raging purgatory and there was no escape, nowhere to go, but he had to try - he was sinking. Fiery waves crashed down over his head, pushing him down. 

Terrible, terrible desperation flooded his very being. The awful memory of that day clawed at him. He couldn't reach the surface.

_He couldn't go under again_. 

Not again.

Unbearable rage, fierce and glaringly red, blinded him.

_She had left him_.

It hadn't been fair. He hadn't done anything wrong. _He was a good boy_. It wasn't _fair_. 

He would not go under.

_Never_ again.

Jason had been so lost when he was awake. He had been on his own, without any guidance, distressed and hopeless. Now, he chose and acted on pure instinct alone. He let the rage free, red-hot tendrils that grew until they burned brighter than the fire around him. 

He fought for his life and with all his strength, there had to be a way to reach the surface - and finally he pushed trough. The unbearable pain, the suffocating flames were behind him, only a distant memory, the afterthought of a flimsy dream that dissolved as soon as he woke up.

Jason opened his eyes. 

He stood at the waters edge. A polished mirror, endless crystal glass, stretched out in front of him. The lake, in the early mornings when it wasn't raining. 

A figure. The other one, that had carried him under his skin. Vague, blurred, as if walking through the mist that covered the lake. It slowly got clearer, now that it was walking towards him instead of away, and the white light was the sunshine, warm and bright. And then Jason saw.

And _was_.

••••

The foreman had told him not to worry and that he would get used to the new sleep-cycle quickly.  
He worked the nightshift at the power plant for two months by now and he was pretty sure his sleep-cycle had not gotten that particular memo. He still felt like death warmed over every day.

Frederick Krueger yawned, feeling his jaw crack. Tears sprung to his eyes and he rubbed them vigouriously with the heel of his hand while walking along the pavement, hoping not to run into a lamp post for the moment. When he looked up again, his sight was blurry and the bright light of the midday sun hurt like needles. He squinted with a sigh and looked down at his heavy steel-capped boots again. One foot in front of the other, yes, that was how that worked. He couldn't wait to arrive home and lay down to sleep. Preferably the whole day, if possible.

"Mister Krueger! Mister Krueger!"

The bell-like voice had him stop and turn around. A little girl in a red dress with the cutest pony-tails stood on the other side of the fence of the Springwood Elementary, looking up at him with a bright smile.

Damn... was he already at the school? He hadn't even noticed.

It was the only bright spot in his life at the moment, passing the school everyday. The children would often still be here, even if school had already ended, to play on the playground or wait for their parents, and he knew quite a lot of them by now. Today, only little Angelica Green was there behind the fence, though, the school and the yard empty otherwise.

"Hello pipsqueak," Frederick said, "How are you today?"

"Good, but I told you my name is Angelica," the little girl answered and Frederick chuckled, putting on a thoughtfull expression, "Really? I could have sworn it was pipsqueak."

The girl giggled and shock her head no with a huge grin. Her pony-tails flew around her head, "That's wrong!"

"But I like it. I tell you something..." he knelt down on the other side of the fence,"How about I can call you pipsqueak and you can call me something else, too? You can call me Freddy."

She thought about it for a moment. Then she squinted up at him, her small nose curling in thought, "But that is your name already."

Freddy laughed,"That's right, but not everyone is allowed to call me that."

"Is it a secret?"

"Yes, pipsqueak, it is a secret." He winked at her, all conspirational, and she looked proud that he had let her in on the most confidential information. 

"Angelica!"

Freddy looked past the little girls head and saw a middle-aged woman with blonde hair walk fast up in their direction. Her heels clacked ominously on the bituminized schoolyard, like an approaching thunderstorm. When she reached them, she had an ugly, red face and grasped Angelicas' hand.

"You are supposed to wait for me in front of the school, young lady!" The woman snarled and shook the little girl in anger, "Wait till your father hears about this!"

Freddy stood up, holding up his hands in a calming manner, "Now, Ma'am, this is a little bit extreme, we were just-"

She looked up at him sharply and her gaze could have cut glass, her voice ice-cold, "Don't talk to my daughter ever again."

She looked at him like he was scum, the lowest of the low, nothing more than dirt under her high-heels or painfully accurate manicured fingernails and Freddy felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle.

"But Mommy, I just wanted to say hello to-" Angelica tried to chime in but her mother would not have it, "Shush, we go home now."

She pulled her away and across the yard and the girl managed to turn and wave at him before they went around a corner and vanished.

Freddy sighed and waved back. What a bitch. 

It wasn't the first encounter he had had with an angry parent or a teacher for stopping at the fence after work and talking to the kids. But it wasn't his fault those stupid bastards let their kids wait for them for hours after school, neglecting them, just because they were busy drinking coffee and chit-chatting at cafes with their friends instead of picking up their brood. He was doing nothing wrong, for fucks' sake. It wasn't his fault the children liked him.  
Especially little Angelica. She was such a bright and nice kid.

_She was the first one you killed~_

The realization came crawling upon him, a half-formed night terror in the back of his mind, slowly, slowly, the bright, sunny world around him dissolving and the school in front of him turning dark and grey. He heard voices, taunting and shrill. 

_Son of a hundred maniacs, son of a hundred maniacs, son of a hundred maniacs~_

There was movement behind him, something big, and he turned, his bones feeling like lead. It was a car rolling up the street, a police car, and he could not see the drivers face. But he knew, without a doubt, that their gaze was drilling into him, only black holes were eyes should have been. Freddy looked at his still raised hand and he suddenly wore a crude leather glove, long, razor-sharp knifes welded to the fingertips. Red, so very red blood dripped from the deadly blades onto the asphalt in slow motion, and raw, naked horror crawled up his spine. 

Reality warped, bending at impossible angles, turning upside down and-

Scorching steam hissed from broken pipes and Jason looked up. Everything was red, like fresh blood. He knew this place. He had been here before.

Behind him, a voice sounded. A myriad of voices. It was the most terrifying thing he had ever heard.

_Revenant~_

And Jason knew that, whatever he did, he did not want to turn around.

•••


	4. Chapter 4

Jason woke in front of the camp entrance, walking without being aware of it. 

The old wooden sign swayed in the darkness, the rusted chain it was hanging from creaking dangerously, close to breaking from the strain. The spotlights that had once illuminated it had burned out a long time ago, as had the few wooden streetlights that were scattered along the old road. There was a strong wind in the trees, carrying a familiar, disembodied scream, and Jason spun around wildly, disoriented, searching, machete in hand. There was nobody. Nobody. The old road leading from the camp was empty, almost grown over with vegetation. 

The need to go was there, in his chest. Strong, so strong. Unbearable, like a red string that tried to pull him along. 

He stared down the road, into the darkness. His vision, poor as it was, closed in, warping at the edges. His head was splitting in half from the pain. The shadows grew out of proportion, twisting like living beings, and he saw movement in the corners of his eyes. 

He remembered the voices. The awful voices.

And he felt something creep up on him, something he had not felt in a very, very long time. 

Fear.

Overwhelming, crippling fear clawed at his chest and jumped into his throat and before he knew what he was doing, he had turned blindly and fled back towards the camp. He entered the first decaying cabin he saw and retreated to the far wall. His broad back collided with the old wood harshly and he sunk down, burying his head in his arms to hide from everything.

He didn't know how long he sat there, how long his head hurt, an unbearable burning behind his left temple that erased any and all concious thought. Eventually, he could hear the wind getting weaker. Birds sung in the trees and when he dared to look up again, a faint rose-tinted glow was visible trough the window. Morning had come.

Jason stood slowly, leaning back against the wall. He was exhausted, completely drained. He was all alone and that was the worst. His body wouldn't cooperate and he could not think properly.

But one thing he knew for certain. 

The other one. He had finally seen him. He knew him. And it wasn't a good memory.

•••

Freddy stumbled out - _from where?_ \- before crashing into a metal banister and almost loosing his balance, falling down the narrow catwalk. He caught himself in the last moment and used his momentum to heave himself around before collapsing on the crude steel grating.

Dazed, he looked up again, leaning against a support beam, his clawed right hand still clenched around the banister over him.

What the _hell_?

One moment he had walked along his path and the next, he had been ... somewhere else. Lights out. Over and done. Total blackout. This had never happened to him before. Especially not here, in his very own domain.

He pulled himself up and noticed with irritation that his legs were shaking. He gingerly touched his forehead with his ungloved hand. His ruined skin was clammy, covered in cold sweat, despite the scorching heat around him. 

The headache was getting worse.

He could remember... a scent. Cedarwood. Damp cedarwood.

Where had he smelled that before? The memory would not come, no matter how hard he tried to remember, blood pounding in his ears.

He looked up, scowling. Everything looked the same, like it always did. But maybe that had been a rift, a way out?  
Whatever it had been, it hadn't felt familiar. 

Slowly, he walked a few steps back and forth over the catwalk, hand never leaving the railing, just in case. The screeching from claws on metal came to a halt when he stopped again. Nothing had happened. There was no crack. 

He turned his head, looking back one last time. 

The catwalk disappeared into the darkness behind him, stretching on into what may as well have been infinity. Steam hissed somewhere above him, draining him in hot moisture. 

Freddy bristled, growled dismissingly in the back of his throat and resumed his path.

•••

Jason paced in his home.

Another thing he had never done before, like running scared from literal shadows and hiding himself.  
But this, this was different. His strength had returned with the daylight. He felt agitated, wild, enraged, and he didn't know how to cope with any of it without the one responsible in front of him to take it out on.

Now he knew who the other one was, the other one whose cries he could hear every night in his nightmares. The one who was responsible for all the pain. The one who had taken his mother.

The burnt man. Freddy.

Even if he had looked unblemished in the last dream, untouched by the fire and flames that had so grotesquely scarred him, Jason had recognized him. Without a doubt.

He had been so sure that he had killed him. 

Apparently not.

He stopped in his pacing and turned to her, remembering how the burnt man had impersonated her, how he had tricked him, hurt him. And now she was gone.

Freddy would pay for this. He would pay dearly. His left temple was throbbing with pain.

He turned and was almost out the door when suddenly, he heard her voice. 

_Jason, my special, special boy~_

His steps faltered abruptly. She was back! Overwhelming joy filled his chest and he heard himself whine helplessly under his breath.

_Where are you going? You don't want to leave me here all alone, do you?~_

No. Never. He walked back immediately. He had to explain. She would understand. She had to. 

_No, I don't understand, my dear. Your duty is here, with me~_

But the nightmares. Freddy. He had taken her away. He had to get him, he had to protect her, now that she was back.

_That scoundrel is none of your concern, sweetheart~_

He cocked his head, not comprehending. The burnt man was threatening him again, him and her. She was back now, but if Freddy was still out there, he could take her again. And Jason would not let that happen, not a second time. He had to do something, couldn't she see?

_I told you to stay here! Listen to your mother, Jason~_

He would. He would always listen and he would always love her, but this... this was wrong. He could feel it, the same instinct blooming in his chest that had guided him through the fire in the dream. It was screaming at him, the pain in his head getting worse, almost overwhelming.

The air suddenly got cold. Ice-cold like it had been when he had woken up with her gone. The shadows grew around him, menacingly.

_You stay here, you goddamn bastard, and rot away like the vermin you are!~_

Jason reared back in shock.

For a painfully long heartbeat, he couldn't do anything, feeling like someone had pulled the ground away from under his feet, his whole world tilting on its axis. He felt his throat constrict. That was not her. That could never be her. She had never talked to him like that, never. 

He stared at her, unable to move, but he realized he could not recognize her in that familiar face. It was so cold.  
Where was his mother?

_We are your mother now, revenant~_

Those voices. Those horrible, horrible voices, seeping into the warmth of his mothers' sweet tone until it screeched in his ears, unbearably loud.

Jason took a step back, unconciously, shaking his head in denial.

_Stay here!~_

No. 

He turned. He would not listen to the voices.

_Come back!~_

No!

He grabbed his machete on the way out and a hunting knife he kept hidden in an old drawer, sheating it at his belt. The voices dissolved into horrifying screams behind him.

_You moron, this doesn't involve you! You cannot have him! WE WILL RIP OUT YOUR SOUL AND FEAST ON YOUR CARCASS! Come back!~_

He was out of his home in a heartbeat and kept walking, hurriedly, towards the front entrance of the camp. He passed the lake, the old cabins and the guard-tower, vision blurring, headache screaming and his heart racing in his chest. 

He finally stopped when he couldn't hear the voices anymore, when he couldn't hear anything anymore except the blood rushing in his ears, next to the old yellow sign that spelled Camp Crystal Lake in bold red letters, a blue and green painting of said lake underneath. The color had faded over time but he stared at it. His home. Everything that had ever been important. 

His mother.

He would find her. He would bring her home. And Freddy... would regret the day he tried to hurt them again.

•••


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pay heed to the archive warnings. If you do not like non-con, stop reading now.

He walked all day, choosing a path through the woods and underbushes along the road so as to not encounter another living soul. He knew what that would most likely end in and he had no time to spare on any fool that tried to stop him for whatever reason. A few times a lonely car drove by and he waited in the thicket until it passed, unmoving, so nobody would accidentally spot him in the broad daylight.

He could remember walking this path at nighttime in the past, many, many times, as it lead to the little town he had visited for supplies. He recognized landmarks and street-signs even though he didn't need them to find his way, not while he was still so close to home.

The last time he had wandered along this road had been when Freddy had tricked him. He had still been tired from a long, long sleep, back then. Not now, though. His body was vibrating with rage, adrenaline pumping in his veins, the thirst for blood on his tongue. He could still hear the voices echoing in his head. 

He arrived at the outskirts of the town in the late afternoon according to the sun, careful not to get to close to the main road. There were more people here, more cars, and less foliage to provide cover, but he had always been good at hiding. Jason kept north-west, walking around the small town in a half-circle and further away, leaving familiar territory behind. 

Instinct was leading him. The pain in his head and the invisible, red string, the urge to move he had felt over the last few weeks from the nightmares that had called him away. It was singing in him, now that he was finally, finally on the way. He trusted that it would lead him to where he needed to be. It had to. He had to find his mother. He had to find Freddy.

Night fell when he arrived at a large river. The sun was already grazing the horizon on the other side, the sky plunged in red and gold. There was a bridge a few hundred yards downstream, but it was still busy with cars and there was no way he would be able to cross it now without getting spotted. He had to wait.

He searched the riverbank and came across a secluded cluster of trees with roots big enough so he could sit on them so as not to give away his position to anyone who happened to look down from the nearby road. Leaning back against the trees he observed the bridge for a while, before gazing over the huge river.

It was very different from his lake. Beautiful in the setting sun with tiny bright spots dancing close to the water. Fireflies. They reminded him of his home, were the same little sparks would dance over the mirrored surface in the twilight of dusk and long into the night. The lake was always calm where here the flow of the water was fast and busy, rushing, rushing, rushing towards the ocean. She had told him that all rivers eventually arrived at an ocean. 

At the thought of her he felt his chest clench painfully. He missed her so much.

He still didn't understand what had happened. Where she was.

Where the voices had come from. 

And the last dream, so different from the ones before, the ones filled with fire and darkness.  
They had been one again, him and the burnt man. He had seen through his very eyes, the sunshine and the little girl, the angry woman and the school. He had no idea what all of it meant, though. Why would he see this? Had all of it really happened? 

His head hurt again, the pounding behind his left temple relentless. The pull in his chest was strong and he wanted to move again, but he had to be patient, he couldn't risk getting spotted. 

Without noticing it, the rushing murmur of the river and his own exhaustion pulled Jason under. 

He was fast asleep before the sun had even fully set on the horizon.

•••

The burning agony that greeted him was almost familiar by now. Flames engulfed him, closing in over his head. Jason pushed on, relentlessly. He had made it one time. He could do it again.

The barrier felt weaker now, only a thin veil that separated the inferno from that other place, the one he crossed over to.

He opened his eyes in the unfamiliar body.

And wished he hadn't.

•••

Pain blistered along the sixteen year old boys' spine with each sharp, loud crack that split the air in half and a hard leather belt was struck over his back. He could feel the skin break, warm streams of blood rushing down his naked body, kneeling on the floor.

There was a man standing above him and he feared that if he turned and looked, the man would have empty holes instead of eyes. 

"You little piece of shit!" A gravely voice spat, full of hate, full of disgust.

Another strike, on top of already open wounds. He bit his lip until he could taste the sharp metallic tang of iron in his mouth. He would not scream.

"Did you think I wouldn't care?!"

This was his own fault. He had been stupid. So goddamn stupid. He had seen the police officers enter the store behind him and still he had stolen the chocolate bar. But he had been so hungry. He hadn't gotten anything to eat for days.

Another strike. 

He would not scream.

"Did you, you bastard?!"

They had caught him of course. And made a big fuckin' deal out of a little piece of candy and a single teen with sticky fingers. Freddy hadn't said a word on the whole way back to his so called home, in the backseat of the police car. 

_Why had he done this? He should be old enough to know that stealing was wrong. His parents should be ashamed._

Damn them all to hell.

Another strike. Drops of blood were flung in the air when the leather belt was raised again. He looked down. There were small puddles forming under him, on the concrete floor of the dark cellar that was his place, glistening red in the dim light. 

Mister Underwood had not been pleased when the officers delivered him, not at all, but he had not let them on about it. He had played the part of the worried legal guardian perfectly, reciting all the practiced sentences they wanted to hear.

_Officer, I have no idea what the boy was thinking._

_But of course, I will have a stern talk with him. _

_You know how boys are at that age, their heads in the clouds. And - you can believe me - I work so hard to provide for him._

They hadn't noticed the ice-cold gleam in his beady little eyes or the way the older man slurred his words. They hadn't even smelled the heavy odor of cheap bourbon that evaporated from him. Or they simply hadn't given a fuck whatsoever. 

Freddy had stood next to the older man the whole time, paralyzed, feeling his own heart beat on his tongue and unable to say a single word. He had not thought about making an attempt to escape or to fight. There was no use in it. As soon as the door had closed and the officers had driven off, strong fingers had closed around his neck, drilling into his flesh. Mister Underwood had dragged him towards the cellar door like a crippled calf ready for slaughter.

Two, three rapid strikes in succession had him almost break his vow. But he could keep it in. He had to. He would not scream.

It wasn't the first time he had been thrown down the rickety stairs. It wouldn't be the last. Before he could even move a muscle, lying crumpled on the floor waiting for the sharp pain that would signal a broken bone, the older man had been on him, dragging him into the middle of the room.

"Undress," he had said, through clenched teeth.

Freddy had obeyed. He had no other choice.

A particular hard strike landed on his lower back. He cursed himself when a small, small whimper broke free and he shuddered.

_God, please, no..._

Of course Mister Underwood had heard him. He had been waiting for it. He always did.

_Weak, pathetic~_

"Oh, you liked that, you little bitch?" 

Freddy shock his head once, pressing his lips into a thin line. He looked down at his clenched, trembling fists in his lap. There were tears running down his cheeks, burning hot streaks, as much as he tried to swallow them down.

"Sounded to me like you do."

He heard a zipper, louder than any strike from the belt could ever be. 

_Bend over~_

Freddy obeyed. There _was_ no other choice. 

And only now did he realize that it wasn't standing behind him, it was watching him from the shadows by the stairs, with those empty eyesockets. If he would have dared to look closer, he would have been able to see something move in them. 

Something small and hungry. 

He would not scream. 

His vision blurred, a hand grasping his neck from behind and - Jason tore himself away violently, blind, naked terror seizing him, shaking him like a ragdoll-

He choked when he came to again on the riverbank, in pitch-black darkness, with pain flaring in his head and streaks of tears that were not his own running down his cheeks under the hard plastic of his mask.

•••


	6. Chapter 6

_We said we are tired of waiting~_

"There is no way out!" Freddy screamed at the fire, loosing the feeble grasp on his last shreds of control. His head hurt, so very much. He felt exhausted. And now their blame again, always, always so easy, and- fuck them!

He had had another blackout, only moments before encountering the large boiler again. He couldn't remember what had happened, but he knew that he had been somewhere else. He just knew. Somewhere he had not wanted to be.

When he had woken with the scent of moist cedarwood in his nose, his back had been aflame with pain. Immensely. Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. And he didn't know what.

_You are not searching. You are hiding. Your time is running out. We may have no more use for you~_

"You fucking, ungrateful bastards," Freddy hacked his knifes into a concrete wall next to him, helpless fury coursing through his veins, "You need me!"

_Do not overestimate your value. Or our patience. You are not irreplacable. We can find another~_

Somewhere in the back of his head Freddy heard a different voice, deeper than the ones in front of him, the ones from behind the grate.

_ **Another shattered soul~** _

Freddy clenched his teeth, grasping his temples and closing his eyes tightly. It was enough that they pestered him from the fire. Not from within his own head, too.

The flames were hissing, spitting, dancing wildly.

_Look at you. We can read you like an open book, you fool. You are still resisting. Calling him to you and thinking we would not notice~_

He growled in the back of his throat, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

_Even after all this time. After all the suffering, you still do not understand~_

The boiler room shuddered. Pipes broke and hot steam exploded into the air. The concrete groaned under the pressure. Freddy took a step back unconciously. 

"What are you doing?"

_We thought you would be perfect.There was so much hate in you, so much rage and darkness. You gave us your word. We sealed it in your blood, burned it in your flesh and engraved it in your bones~_

The fire grew uncontrollably, bursting forth through the grate.

_You belong to us. It is time we remind you of it~_

•••

Jason crossed the bridge in the middle of the night.

He couldn't wait anymore, couldn't sit still, not after he had woken up in turmoil. He had to go and damn anyone who would see him. 

There was no one on the bridge, though. Not a single car and no people. The street-lights were shut off and the fireflies had vanished. He walked a concrete path over a void of darkness with the river rushing down below and the stars above.

The nightmare was festering in the back of his mind, like one of those fat, hairy spiders that he knew were hiding in the dry bushes at the southern campsite, large enough to prey on birds. He couldn't forget it, couldn't wash the foul taste of it from his mouth, couldn't surpress the pain in his back were the leather belt had cut open his skin even if the wounds had already healed. If he ever saw that man with the belt - that monster - again, he would kill him. Slowly. 

His thoughts drifted to Freddy involuntarily. He hated him, for everything he had done to him, to his mother. He knew the burnt man was dangerous, with those sharp claws of his that could tear and shred through flesh and bone like it was nothing. Had Freddy killed the monster, for what he had done to him? 

Somehow, somewhere deep in his mind, Jason hoped he had. 

On the other side of the river was a big, green sign with white letters on it. There were spotlights over the sign that weren't shut off like the rest of them. Almost like the ones at home, at the camp entrance, when they had still been in use. He stopped and squinted with his one good eye so he could decipher the words. It spelled 'Delaware River Bridge - Now leaving New Jersey'. And further underneath were even more words, with bigger letters. The last one was long and a little bit more difficult than the others but he managed it in the end. 

'Welcome to Pennsylvania'

Back then the other children had often picked on him, claiming he was too dumb to read his own name with that stupid, big head of his. But she had taught him, even if he had been slow, what all those confusing signs in the books meant with the patience of a saint. Soon he had been able to make out the words and even whole sentences. He had read one of his favourite books all by himself, a week before the lake had claimed him. He had been so proud. As had his mother. She had wanted to teach him how to write next.

He had forgotten the name of the book. 

There was a painful sensation in his chest. The pull was still there, the red string glowing in front of him. Still so strong. 

He wished she was here with him. He wished she would talk to him. She would remember the name of the book, he was sure of it. 

And he would not be so alone.

Silently, he followed the winding road that vanished into darkness, haunted by the images from the nightmare.

•••


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When your solution to every problem is a machete to its face.

Jason would walk as far as he could during the night and the better half of the next day and still it felt as if he had only managed a mere fraction of the way. He had to take time-consuming detours, walk around a few small villages and one big gas station that was filled to the brim with huge trucks and far, far too many people. He had no desire to encounter anyone.

In the end, he managed two days before that plan went to hell.

He was deep in the woods, having abandoned walking along the road as the red string pulled him in a different direction, when he heard several voices. And they were coming towards him. 

Immediately, he stepped behind a tree, listening closely.

There were three of them. All male, arguing amongst themselves.

Jason looked around, scanning the area for a way to make a tactical retreat or to find a better hiding place. There was a high rock ledge to his left, too steep for him to climb. On the other side was a small river, one he could probably cross easily as it wasn't that deep, but the area was too open. He would definitely be seen. There was no other choice but to stay were he was and wait for them to come. He pressed himself against the tree. The voices were getting closer.

"I told you to bring the Weatherby. You are such an idiot, Ray."

"No, you messaged me when I was already on my way. You know I don't look on my phone when we're on a trip. That's the rule."

"That's stupid. We would have gotten that deer with the damn Weatherby. Nothing beats a .257-inch-caliber."

Hunters. With guns. So annoying. Any other time, any other place, he would have gone for them. Now, he had no time for this.

"So, how long're you gonna be salty 'bout this?"

"I'll piss in yer damn sleepin' bag tonight."

"I always knew you were one of those."

"Fuck you."

They walked past, so close he could have touched them had he reached out, but they were still talking to each other and didn't pay any attention to their surroundings. Silently, his eyes never leaving them, Jason rounded the tree, towards the opposite side.

He had just about finished his quiet disappearing act to resume on his way when the three men behind him stopped dead and Jason frooze as soon as he coudn't hear their footsteps anymore so they would not hear him.

"What the fuck? You see those tracks?"

"Holy hell, who was that? Bigfoot?"

Jason breathed a long suffering sigh. 

"Dunno, man, but whoever this is we would have seen them. They're walking in the direction we're coming from."

"Yeah, and we definitely would have heard someone stompin' around with those - shht."

For a few moments, there was no sound. He could feel them looking in his direction, even though he was still concealed behind the tree.

"Hey. Who's there?"

Of course he would not answer. Jason turned slowly, lifting his free hand to the knife in his belt. He heard them pulling their hunting rifles, unlocking the safety switches. 

"Come out, we don't want any trouble, man."

Jason had not wanted that, either. So much for that.

He stepped around the tree unceremoniously and, using their surprise at his appearance to his advantage, pulled the old knife from his belt and threw it into the first ones forehead with deadly accuracy. The man dropped like a dead weight. The other two screamed and one fired a defeaning shot that missed him by a mile. Jason heard it ricochet off a rock behind him while he had already plunged his machete into the shooters' abdomen. He grasped the mans' shocked face for leverage and pulled, blood splattering everywhere when he fell, before turning onto the last one. The man was holding a long rifle, aiming it at his head. 

"S- stop!" 

Jason couldn't care less. He had to hurry. Headshots were nasty. He took one, two quick steps and grasped the gun barrel, pointing it away from him the moment the man gathered his courage and fired a shot. Too late. Jasons' ears rang from the close ranged blast, his left shoulder dislocating at the high velocity impact. A dull pain exploded in the left side of his chest and down his arm. He swung his weapon. The decapitated corpse fell to the ground. 

Jason stumbled back breathing harshly, his injured arm dangling uselessy at his side. Blood was gushing down his front and his back from the gunshot that had missed his heart by a mere fraction.

Well... that could have gone better. 

He was getting rusty, he supposed. 

Darkness claimed him and he couldn't even remember falling to the ground.

•••

The first thing he became aware of was a dull, ominous beating. It sounded from far away and inside his own head at the same time.

He was swept away in a raging torrent of flames in the next moment, lifted up and pulled under, tossed around like a rudderless shipwreck lost in a storm. 

The barrier.

He could feel it, like the fire that singed away his flesh. It was not far.

Jason fought himself through and crossed over.

•••

"Come on, try it."

The boy next to him was maybe fifteen years old, sixteen at most. He had messy black hair, dark eyes and wore an old jeans that was ripped up at the knees. He was taller than himself, but only by some few, measly inches. He thought a great deal of himself because of those. 

Nathan. His name was Nathan O'Connor. They were neighbours, if you could call it that. He lived in the trailer park down the street with his mother, who was drunk off her ass half the time and smelled glue with her various boyfriends the other. Nathan was a misfit with a bad reputation, much like he himself. Somehow, they had found a fragile company in each other. The older boy didn't care that he was weird or what the others called him. That he was always alone. That he collected the bones of small animals in a shoe box, stuffed in the furthest corner of that one squeaky storage rack in the back of his cellar. And he didn't make fun of new bruises on his neck or cigarette burns on his arms, because he had the same.

They were sitting hidden in the shades of the stands, an empty football-field streching out in front of them. The summer sun was setting, bathing everything in a light orange haze. Mayflies were dancing in the air. The boy held out a hand-rolled, burning cigarette. 

Freddy hesitated for a moment. He didn't like the bitter smell.

"Oh my god, you're such a pussy," Nathan laughed and took a drag himself, blowing the smoke in Freddys' face. He tried hard to surpress it but a small cough broke through. The other boy laughed even harder because of this. Freddy felt his ears heat up, his cheeks flushing. 

"Shut your fuckin' mouth, asshole," Freddy resolutely reached out and brought the cigarette to his lips.

He inhaled, way too fast, too much and too deep. The thick smoke choked his lungs. He coughed violently, chest heaving with gasping breaths. The taste of hot ash was disgusting and he whiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 

Nathan almost rolled on the ground with laughter by now.

"You're a bloody idiot!" Freddy snapped, once he was able to speak again without vomitting his lungs all over himself.

Nathan sat up and he punched his shoulder playfully, "Aw, don't be like that. You did it wrong, stupid. Here... I'll show you."

He fished the still burning cigarette from the grass were it had fallen and took a deep drag. Then he leaned close without warning. Freddy froze when their lips touched. A warm hand cradled his face. He opened his mouth in shock and Nathan blew the smoke gently into him. He inhaled and the need to cough was still there, but his brain had short-circuted, neurons firing wildly in every direction and throwing any and all thoughts about survival overboard. Nathan grew more bold, leaning even closer and Freddy could feel his tongue, warm and wet, slide gently over his lower lip. He grasped onto Nathans' wrist and held on for the world had started to spin around him.

He had never been kissed before.

It was strange. It was great. He liked it.

Nathan leaned back again, just a little bit to break the kiss, their foreheads touching.

"I thought you liked girls," Freddy whispered, looking into dark eyes. His voice was hoarse and he was sure his cheeks were burning again.

Nathan just shrugged, grinning loopsidedly, "Nah. Not really."

"You fingered Brenda Harris in the locker room last week," Freddy stated quizzically, "Everyone says that."

"Then everyone is a liar," Nathan quipped with that damn charming smile of his and he leaned in again and Freddy would have liked were this was going very much if they hadn't been interrupted rudely that very moment.

"Oi, look at the two faggots over there!"

Before Freddy could react in any way, Nathan pushed him hard in the chest. Disoriented, he lost his grip on the other, fell to the ground and hit his head on the wooden post behind him, pain ringing in his ears.

"Hey, you little shitheads!"

There was the sound of running feet, of a brief scuffle, and when Freddy could open his eyes again, he looked into the violently spinning the sky above him. 

"O'Connor! Come back, you damn cunt!"

Freddy was ripped off the ground by the front of his shirt and looked up, and up, all the way up, into the face of Adam Chamberlain, senior year and the acclaimed star of Springwood Highs' football team. 

Great. Fucking fantastic.

"Look, it's the stupid freak!" Adam jeered into his face, almost jubilant, cruel, joyous amusement dancing in his eyes, "I knew you were a fucking queer, Krueger. I knew it."

"Fuck you!" Freddy spat in his face and he received a punch in the stomach for it that had him crumble to the ground, insides rolling with pain, trying to crawl away instinctively. He was stopped by more than one set of hands grasping his clothes that pulled him back.

And that would be Thomas Lantz and Kirk Parker. Those two lugheads were always following Adam around and to say none of them had ever liked him was an understatement. No one in this fucking town did, but those three had always made it their mission to make his life even more miserable than it already was. And now they had seen him and Nathan... 

Nathan.

Freddy looked up, as best as he could. He could just see a glimpse of a dark clad figure jumping over the fence in the distance, vanishing down the street.

That _fucker_!

Nathan had abandoned him. He had fucking _abandoned_ him, like a damn coward.

"Oh, what's wrong, freak? Your little boyfriend left you all alone?" Adam rejoiced and Freddy could hear it in the tone of his voice, how much the asshole got off on this. Dread was creeping into him, crawling up his throat and cutting off his air supply when he realized that he had just inadvertendly delivered them the perfect reason to finally beat the crap out of him. And just because of a little, harmless...

"That scrawny ass probably wasn't worth it," Lantz mused, leaning over him with a nasty sneer on his face, "You a juiceless fuck, eh, Krueger?"

"Yeah, you know what they say, faggot," Parker cut in, cackeling, "Good bitches swallow."

"Get away from him, I've always wanted to do this," Adam said and he took aim before kicking him in the face. 

Freddy was catapulted up out of the hands holding him down, head snapping violently backwards and he heard his nose crack on impact, a hollow crunch vibrating through his skull. Blood filled his mouth and he spat it out into the grass, writhing in pain.

"Oh, that was a good one, Adam!"

"I'm not fucking finished."

Multiple sets of hands wrenched him upright again, pulling him up on his knees. His head was spinning and his whole face exploded in white-hot pain when Adam wasted no time and punched him in the temple as soon as he knelt in front of him. Freddy blacked out for a heartbeat, coming to again with bright white spots dancing in front of his eyes, kneeling on all fours, forehead touching the grass. He felt sick, his stomach revolting. He heard them laugh over him. 

"You like that, you disgusting little creep? As much as getting it up the ass from that loser O'Connor?"

"Or the old fart he's living with."

"Yeah, right. Do you, huh, Krueger? Learned it from that old geezer? You suck him off, too? Say something, you fucking faggot bitch!"

Something snapped. 

The stutter of a heartbeat. The stomach-churning second of freefall in a nightmare before waking up. 

Freddys' vision caved in. He felt himself unravel at the edges. The pain numbed, almost vanishing to a dull beating he could hear from far away and inside his own head at the same time. It was loud, deafening, vibrating through his bones. When he opened his eyes again, everything was plunged into a red, so very red haze. It burned in his eyes and under his skin. His fingers clawed into the grass and he could taste his own blood when he bared his teeth. Iron. Iron and hate and rage.

He was grasped again, thick fingers clasping roughly around his neck and when he was ripped off the ground he turned his head without thinking, without hesitation, dislodging the hand and sinking his teeth into flesh as hard as he could.

Blood exploded into his mouth, mixing with his own and he could hear an ear-piercing scream when he bit down harder, blinded by the scorching red haze that drowned out everything else. He felt the resistance between his jaw give, almost in slow motion, heard bone crack but he held on, his own fingers burrowed into Adams' forearm. The tension finally snapped and Adam ripped free and fell back, clutching his hand to his chest, screeching bloody murder across the field.

Freddy spat the severed little finger to the ground, a surge of blood gushing after it, dripping down his chin, out of his broken nose.

Parker and Lantz looked at him, standing stock-still and pale as ghosts. 

Adam squirmed on the ground, "You'll pay for this! You'll pay for this, you fucking psycho!"

Freddy clambered to his feet, almost vomiting from the pain, from the violent spinning in his head. He stared at the severed finger in the grass, breathing hard, mesmerized by the red glow of blood. He couldn't speak. His face was splitting in half.

He looked up at the three and Adam wasn't screaming anymore. They weren't saying anything anymore.  
Their eyes were gone, yawning black holes gaping in their ashen faces. They were smiling at him, darkness fell from the sky like spilled ink and their grins melted into something much, much more sinister.

_Hello, Freddy~_

•••

The sun was still warm, even that late in the day and despite the season. Golden light flickered through the bald birch trees on the other side of the small river. Tiny blue jewels were flitting over the water, a family of kingfishers hunting for small silver fish.

Jason leaned against a rock at the water and held the new hunting knife in his right hand. The long blade looked shiny and clean, as if it had never been used. The blunt edge had ridges, meant for cutting skin off deer or boar more easily and the black hilt fit into his large hand perfectly. It was beautiful. One of the hunters had carried it in his belt and now it was his. 

His left arm was still useless, lying in his lap, even though he had set his shoulder right again about half an hour ago. The bullet that had hit him had been big enough to severe several tendons and muscles, leaving a gaping hole on his front and an even bigger exit wound in his back. It would take maybe another hour for everything to go back to normal. He had to move on then. The red string in his chest was still burning brightly, the sharp stabbing sensation in his temple was familiar by now but no less distracting.

Jason looked at the knife without really seeing it, turning it slowly in his fingers. A dark memory was crawling under his skin. That last dream. He too had once known the feeling of being so helpless, a long, long time ago.

He could remember a crowd of nameless faces in front of the lake on a bright and sunny day, distorted with evil, childish glee, fingers pointing at him, hard hands shoving, tearing and scratching. The laughter and the abuse. The cold darkness in him that festered and _grew_.

He had drowned in it. 

And others had went up in flames, burning everything around them down to the ground.

•••


	8. Chapter 8

It had started to rain in the middle of the night, a thin, constant mist from above. Thousands upon thousands of small raindrops collected on the naked, spidery tree-branches and the ground turned muddy and more difficult to traverse. Fog rose up around him in between the trees come morning, the air cold and damp, smelling like a freshly dug grave. The dusky, humid twilight of the new day felt utterly unreal, the forest around him silent and still and Jason wondered for a moment if maybe he had crossed over without noticing, if this was a dream, too. 

Or a memory from another life, lost in a broken and burnt mind.

He found it harder and harder to distinguish.

The twilight between the trees dwindeled and cleared up with every step he took through thick mud. Finally, a huge clearing opened up in front of him, sawed off tree stumps burrowed into the ground as far as he could see in the dense fog. The treeline on the other side of the clearing was swallowed by the white smoke screen, almost invisible, but the string kept pulling him forward and so he went on. 

He had to watch his step, the earth itself furrowed by crippled and twisted rootwork that gorged through the muddy ground. The fog intensified and swallowed every sound, even his heavy footfalls that crushed the brittle and treacherous roots. A thin, so very thin feeling crept up his neck, spreading like fine frost on a window in the winter. 

Jason was a hunter, a stalker, he knew how to pursue, how to stay silent and hidden, he had known for the better half of his existence. He knew how to kill for her. The feeling of being prey eluded him, ever had since he had grown into who and what he was now. But at that moment, alone with himself and far from his home, unable to see more than a few feet in front of his eyes, he suddenly sensed it.

He was being watched. And he did not like it.

This place was not right. It felt not right. Nothing about it, the silence, the thick fog, the tree stumps in the ground. They started to form a spiral pattern that lead him forwards and he slowly reached what must be the center.  
There in the middle was a shapeless, dark bulk on the ground. His grip on the machete tightened and he slowly reached up to the knife sheated in his belt. The freezing sensation in his neck got even colder. 

It was a dead deer, bloated and half decomposed, buried in the ground. Bleak bones, horn and white teeth were peaking out from underneath the remains of dirty, brown fur. A milky, dead eye, glazed over by rot, stared at him. A sharp stab of pain shot through his left temple.

Jason did not move. The cadaver did. 

The brown fur started to simmer, to seeth, slowly at first and then overwhelmingly until a black, glittering liquid oozed out from the rotten flesh, a dark mass that flowed and slipped, unnaturally and grotesque. It grew and straightened in front of him until it formed a twirling, wiggling thing that looked like the bizarre caricature of a human being. Except it wasn't. It were thousands, maybe millions, of tiny crawling creatures, staring at him through little fractured eyes. The thing was boiling, twitching, in constant movement to defy gravity and keep its upright position. Its arms and legs changed their length undeviatingly, the hands had two fingers, then none, then a dozen and parts of the disgusting mass kept falling off only to crawl back into the nightmarish entity on microscopic small legs. 

Only the eyes of the thing, formed of slightly larger chitin cocoons and transparent wings, never changed their place in the squirming chaos, as if stapled into the air. They looked at him.

Jason lifted the machete. This was not Freddy. This was something else entirely. 

And then the thing spoke and it were the voices that had talked through his mother, the voices that had talked to Freddy in the nightmares.

_Revenant~_

He stopped for a heartbeat. What were the voices doing here? How had they found him?

_We are where there is death and fear~_

Then they could die here. Jason took a menacing step forward, lifting his weapon again and the thing stepped back, except it was no step, it was a gliding motion on millions of tiny feet. He heard the rustling of chitin and countless small mandibles. It laughed.

_What do you think you are doing? You cannot kill us~_

He could try. He had killed everything that had come before it, sooner or later. Everything but the burnt man. Freddy was one of the only exceptions, apparently, but not by lack of trying on his part. 

It spoke again.

_He belongs to us. He will burn until he remembers who he swore his oath to. You cannot have him~_

Jason cocked his head in confusion. They had said that before, in his home, screamed it after him. He did not want to have Freddy. Not for any longer than he needed to cut his head off. 

The thing in front of him mimicked cocking its head.

_You cannot kill him, either. There is nothing for you at the end of your journey. Nothing but your own downfall~_

There was his mother. She was what he wanted to have. 

_Why do you risk yourself for this lying whore?~_

Jason startled. Something in his chest constricted rapidly. He squeezed the hilt of his weapon but before he could react, vicious and violent, the thing kept talking, the voices getting cold, slobbering with dark malice. 

_Always protecting her precious, little boy. That is what she told you, that she would shelter you from anything, didn't she? She lied to you. She did not stop the cruelty of the others or the neglect of the counselors, she did not protect you from drowning in the lake like a beaten and unwanted dog~_

He took a step forward, blinded by unbridled rage, his blood ready to boil over. It felt like walking through a swamp, his legs unwilling to cooperate. The words hurt, so very much and he wanted the monster in front of him to stop talking because this could never be true-

_She lied and she was not there for you, revenant. She lied and she ignored your cries for help. She **lied** and she left you in the black, freezing waters. And do you want to know why? Deep, deep down in her heart, she was glad you were gone. No one could love such a horrible, disfigured abomination like you. The retarded bastard spawn of the man who forced himself on her~_

Jason felt something in him snap violently. He finally, finally surged forward and slashed through the thing with his blade. It exploded in a maelstrom of chitin and goo, the sudden buzzing of thousands of insects taking flight deafening. For a moment he thought he could see something else under the swirling mass, something grey and snake-like, with empty eyesockets staring at him, then it was gone, swallowed up in the whirlwind of tiny, black creatures.

He could still hear the voices.

_Her soul belongs to us, now~_

He slashed into the thing again. And again, dead bugs falling to the ground, broken and twisted. Insects were crawling and flying away by the thousands, burrowing into the earth, into the dead deer again, the black mass crumbling away and disintegrating to nothing.

_As will yours~_

They still laughed at him. 

_You are too late~_

It was gone. The constant buzzing of wings fell silent, but not the rush of blood in his ears, the adrenaline pumping through him, the need to harm and maim and kill. He was all alone again and he turned, searching his surroundings, waiting for an attack, but none came. 

He looked down. He had done some damage at last. Hundreds of dead insects littered the ground, tiny legs and broken wings twitching in the throes of death. One of them was still alive, undamaged, a fat black bug lying on its back, squirming.

Jason lifted his right boot and stepped on it, crushing it with his heel. The fog lifted and he looked up at the treeline in front of him, mad rage burning in his eyes, his broad shoulders shaking. The red string glowed in front of him, the pain in his head screaming, urging him to go on.

The voices would see. They would _see_.

•••


	9. Chapter 9

He lost count of the days that passed after the encounter. The change of day and night, light and dark, were just a hazy mist through which he kept going, walking tireless along the path of the red string. The voices' spiteful words burned in his mind and images from the nightmares flickered in front of his eyes leaving only a haunting feeling of desperation that festered in him like a badly inflamed wound. 

It was not true. It couldn't be. His mother had never lied to him. She had not let him drown, she had not abandoned him in the lake. It had been the counselors' faults. They had not done their job. And it had been the other children that had pulled the sack over his head and tied it around his neck too tightly, rendering him almost unable to breathe. They had scared him and chased him into the water. 

Memories rose in him, memories he had refused to recall in decades and it was like a dam had broken in his mind, the black flood rushing in and swallowing everything in its path. Every single step he took painted a clearer picture of that day so long ago until he could not deny the ugly truth anymore.

It had been his own fault, too. He had known that the other children had not liked him. That they had been disgusted by him. He had experienced their rejection and cruelty before, because of the way he had looked, the way he had spoken back then, slowly and with much difficulty. And yet, and yet... he had disobeyed his mother, foolishly walking out of their cabin alone when she had been away even though she had explicitly told him to stay. He had just wanted... the blue water of the lake that he had seen from the window had looked so peaceful. There had been millions of tiny, bright lights sparkling on the surface from the midday sun. 

He had thought that the others would not notice him, or maybe ignore him, if he was just quick enough. He knew he couldn't swim and he had not wanted to. He had just wanted to touch one of the bright sparkles to see if he could catch it in his hands.

It had been his own fault.

Jason did not realize that he had slowed down until he stopped altogether in the middle of a lonely road. His vision was darkening. Despair and regret were eating away at him and he felt his very self ripping to tiny pieces, like cold ashes scattered in the winds. The small lights from his memory were dancing in front of his eyes and there were those hollow noises again, coming from his own, heaving chest. 

_Deep, deep down in her heart, she was glad you were gone._

Those horrible words, constantly on replay in his mind. Had she really been? 

_No one could love such a horrible, disfigured abomination like you._

Jason did not know what he was. Not now, and especially not back then. He had never understood but he had not thought about it for a very long time. Why had he always been the way he was and not normal like the other children at the camp? Had his mother secretly wished for that? He remembered his face, the horryfing visage that had stared back at him from the waters of the lake. An abomination, just like the voices had said. Was that what she really saw in him, what he saw in himself, an ugly monster, undeserving of her affection, just a deformed liability? 

His head hurt.

No. 

No, it could not be. 

She had always loved him. She had.

The voices were lying. They _had_ to be. It was not true.

Why had she left him then, now that he needed her the most? Why was she not coming back?

He lifted his hand to his forehead, the stabing sensation in his left temple flaring up even stronger. The hole inside of him were she had been was a yawning abyss. The pain was calling him, urging him to go on. He listened to it. He was burning with it. There was nothing else left. His vision cleared. 

Jason looked up again. Somehow, he had stopped right next to another sign by the road.

'Leaving Pennsylvania - Thank you for your visit' it said and under that, in big, bright letters 'Ohio welcomes you to the heart of it all'. There was a painting of a tree next to the word Ohio, with several buckeye nuts at the bottom.  
He stared at the sign before looking down the empty road, stretching far into the woods until it curved out of sight. 

It wasn't far now. He could feel it.

The sun was already setting. 

Wherever he was going, he would be there by nightfall.

•••

The town was called Springwood.

A huge billboard at the side of the road had declared it but in the end, he hadn't really needed it to remember. He noticed the familiar, unsetteling sensation as soon as he arrived at the city outskirts. The whole town felt just like it had the last time he had been here. 

Suffocating.

He could not see any reason for it, could not pinpoint the cause exactly, as there was nothing out of the ordinary on the prim and clean surface, but Jason could feel it, taste it in the back of his throat. It was a black dread, a silent, eerie _wrongness_ in the air, that stuck like viscous resin to the perfectly groomed gardens behind white fences, the nice looking houses and the brightly lit shops, to the very people milling about. A dark stain that would not wash away, no matter how hard one tried.

He was not far from Elm Street now. He remembered. He had killed there, lured in by Freddy in the disguise of his mother. But this time, Elm Street was not were he needed to go, where he was being called to.

The red string pulled him on a different path, away from the main streets, from the lights and the people, leading him south through empty parking lots and dark backyards. He walked on a single, broken road without any street lights until there was nothing anymore, leaving the town that felt so very wrong behind.

The road led to the top of a steep hill. Jason stopped at the summit and he knew he had made it. This was the place.

The old power plant that was nestled in the valley below looked abandoned, dark and silent, like a sleeping, ancient monster half buried in the ground. There were no lights, no movements, not a single sign of anything being alive down there. A decrepit ruin, a rotting corpse, too decomposed for even the maggots to find anything interesting about it.

The red string was glowing in front of him, pulling on him so strongly it almost felt like real hands were dragging him along, the pain in his left temple intense enough to make his eyes water. 

Jason continued on down the hill. The old road stopped in front of a gate in the high fence that surrounded the area, topped with barbed-wire. It was locked with a rusty chain and he grasped it, pulling once, twice, before it snapped. The gates' hinges squealed like a dying animal when he pushed it open.

As soon as he set foot inside the compound it was like a blanket had been pulled over his ears. The sudden silence was unnatural, not just the abscence of any sound, but a damp quality in the air that blocked out everything, even the wind, like the whole place was sitting in another plane of existence. It felt like the clearing in the woods, just before he had encountered the swirling insect creature and the voices. The only thing he could hear was a familiar dull beating, sounding from far away and inside his own head at the same time. It was faint, almost unnoticable, but Jason had a feeling that it wouldn't stay that way. The pain in his head pulsed behind his left temple. 

The gate closed on its own behind him. A certain coldness crept up his neck again, crawling under his skin and Jason knew he was being watched. He was being expected.

He breathed in deeply and followed the red string. 

It led him down a muddy road between broken down buildings, deeper into the industrial wasteland. Broken glass littered the ground, pieces of sharp metal and random debris. The whole place was reeking of dirth, of decay and stale gasoline. He passed several large cooling ponds that had filled with rainwater, a thick layer of oil and black slag swimming on the surface. 

The constant headache suddenly flared up behind his eyes, a sharp bolt of lightning that tore through him and almost made him stumble. A strange, outlandish feeling grasped him, rising in his chest. He knew this place. He had been here before. He recognized the sights, the buildings with the broken windows and the muddy road, the foul _smell_, so eerily familiar and foreign at the same time. 

No. Jason shock his head to clear it. 

It had not been himself, he had never been here in his whole life. But someone else had, many, many times. It felt like in the dreams, like seeing through the other ones' eyes. Through Freddys' eyes. 

Jason looked up, half expecting the burnt man to stand right in front of him on the desolate road, that insufferable grin on his face and about to attack him with those sharp claws. There was no one. And yet, Jason could not shake the feeling that Freddy was here, with him. Or just in his head.

The dull, ominous beating got louder. Closer.

He followed the red string to an almost hidden metal door, imbedded in the crumbling brickwork of a large building. It looked old and forgotten, like everything in this place, but this one was especially insignificant. It was wretched between unused steel beams, rotten wooden boxes and spare bundles of barbed wire and the black paintwork was chipping off the cold metal.

Jason reached up to open the door.

As soon as he touched the handle a scream tore through his head, filled with unbearable agony. The pain in his head flared until it felt as if it would split in half. Reality warped and shifted unnoticably and he _saw_-

The door burst open in front of him and scorching heat hit him in the face when a creature born out of the deepest, darkest nightmares stumbled out, shrouded from head to toe in a cloak of blazing fire. It - _he_ \- was still alive, screaming, gurgling in pain through burnt vocal cords, a sound so profoundly terrifying that there was nothing human about it anymore. The heat had turned his hair to ashes and covered his hands in red, weeping blisters so that it looked as if he was wearing wet, red rubber gloves that were two sizes too big for him, peeling off in thick stripes. His face didn't look much better. It was Freddy. Even though he was almost unrecognizable in the fire, Jason knew immediately. For just a heartbeat he met the others' gaze. There was an abyssmal madness, unhinged corrupting insanity in those wide, blue eyes, raging even worse than the fiery inferno that had turned the man into a column of flames.

Whatever spell had him just standing there broke and Jason stumbled back, narrowly avoiding the burning man as he blindly ran past. He could feel the fire licking at his clothes. 

He turned to follow... and Freddy was gone. 

The area around him was empty. Dark and silent. The door behind him was closed and it still looked as if it had not been opened in a long, long time. It had... been a dream. Or rather a nightmare come to life. 

Jason clenched his jaw under the mask. He did not understand. Why was he seeing all of this? What did it mean? And why was his head hurting so much? Whatever was happening to him, if the voices were doing this or Freddy himself, he was sick of it. This had to end and it had to end now.

Jason grit his teeth, opened the door and stepped inside the building.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. The air inside was metallic, old and stale and yet, he could still notice the scent of cold ashes. And under that, so subtle, so very faint, something else. It was the distinctive smell of burnt flesh. The place had been on fire, a long time ago. And he knew who had gone up in flames with it.

Jason turned slowly, searching, the machete in his hand raised for an attack. There was no one here. No one. The walls, broken tables and shelfs filled with rusted tools, the old machines were covered in thick, black grime and soot, untouched for what could very well have been decades. 

But that could not be. This was the place, this was the end of his journey, where he had been called to, the end of the red string. He was right here. And there had to be something more than just mere hallucinations of Freddy and an unsetteling feeling of deja vu. 

The silence was deafening, overwhelming, the dull beating hammering against the inside of his skull, the sharp, stabbing pain wreacking havoc on his head. 

And then the beating stopped abruptly. 

The whole room was plunged in glaring red and orange light when the large boiler behind him flared to life, flames spitting and hissing, and he recognized it as the voices, their whispers in the fire.

This time, Jason turned around.

•••


	10. Chapter 10

His conciousness was flickering in and out of existence, sweltering like a delirious fever-dream. Everything felt muted and unreal in the red and orange haze that flashed through the trembling of his eyelids. He could hear a dull beating inside of his head and at first he couldn't remember why it felt so familiar. Why it got louder. And when he did, he could only think of one thing. He did not want to wake up. 

That mercy was not granted.

Freddy came to again, slumped like a discarded ragdoll against the bottom of a metal staircase that led to nowhere. The first thing he noticed was the taste of blood on his tongue and then the overwhelming sensation of bright pulses of agony, as every nerve in his body recalled injury after injury at a rapid pace and he was violently thrown back into awareness. He hissed through clenched teeth, a pathetic whimper he immediately hated himself for. 

The pain was something he was not used to. He had not been hurt for a very, very long time, not really. Not like this. Every injury before had always been more of a distant memory of what that sensation used to feel like. In fact, he had relished it, the exhilarating power over pain, even the hint of a thrill, of pleasure it gave him. He had been convinced that it had been himself, who had overcome that human weakness, that crippling impairment, so long ago in a place he did not want to think about. It turned out he had been wrong. About many things. 

It had always been them.

And now they had taken his priviledge away.

Freddy instinctively pressed his left hand on the largest, gaping wound in his side and barely surpressed another sound when it hurt like a bitch. The lacerated flesh bled sluggishly, dark red liquid seeping out from between his fingers and into his clothes. His other hand, the one with his glove, with the knifes, was useless, splayed on the steps as they had broken his forearm, his wrist and several bones in his fingers. His whole right side was on fire, as if someone had poured molten metal into his veins. In hindsight, he should never have tried to defend himself. 

_No. You should not have. There is no use~_

Their presence was like a well of gravity right in front of him, heavy and foreboding. He knew they were standing there, watching him, he could feel their gaze burning inside his head. Freddy pressed his eyes shut.

"Fuck you," he snarled, his voice feeling raw in his throat, "Fuck you, you _bastards_!"

They moved silently, sliding closer and looming over him. He could hear them laugh, a quiet, dismissive chuckle. 

_So little respect. And so little comprehension~_

Something touched his chin. A sharp pointed claw made of a darkness that had no name in the real world, woven from an essence of shadows, substantial only in this realm that could not be called hell or even purgatory but something else, something they had created, a stolen wrinkle in reality were they could exist and feast on souls that were not their own as they never had one to begin with.

The claw pushed his head up, slowly, insistently until Freddy had no choice but to look up lest the sharp tip pierced his flesh and bored right into his jaw. 

They had no real shape, not even a face, though it seemed as if there were teeth in there. Way too many teeth. He could not really look at them, his eyes unable to focus on their form and unfit to process the very matter they were made of. They were shifting constantly, their aura simmering and boiling like the air over a concrete street in the middle of a heat-wave. He had seen them as snakes before, with human skulls for heads. He had seen them as flames in the boiler and as a monstrosity shrouded in darkness but this was what they really were. A defunct rip in reality, the surreal moments between sleep and waking up, intangible, fleeting nightmares filled with nameless, shapeless horrors.

Despite the lack of eyes in the shifting, iridescent creature over him Freddy could feel their gazes, cutting through his flesh, dissecting tendons and muscles, down to the very bone, stripping him completely bare and looking into the deepest, darkest parts of his soul. It was worse than the physical pain, much, much worse. Freddy tried to look away but they grasped his jawline painfully, holding him still, forcing him to look at them. 

_You are really wondering why we did this~_ They sounded almost mesmerized, as if they were inspecting a particular enigmatic puzzle. _You are asking yourself what you did to deserve this. You still don't know~_

He bared his teeth at them, spitting vitriol, "I did nothing! I tried, I told you and you just-"

_The human mind is really ... peculiar. Persistent. We thought we had turned you into so much more, but apparently, we were wrong. And we put so much effort into you~_

Their claws reached up to his eyes. The sharp tip was close. Way too close. Freddy tried to twist his head away but their hold on him would not break. They pushed him down against the metal staircase. 

"Don't-"

The claw tip scraped over his cheekbone, cutting it open and almost nicked his lower eyelid but they did not gorge out his eye. Not yet, at least. Freddy growled low in the back of his throat. He could taste iron on his tongue.

_You had so much potential and we... we had such high expectations. Not everything that burns is consumed by the fire. You proved it and for a while... you were glorious. You were our salamander~_

Warm blood slid down his cheek from the cut. It collected in the corner of his mouth, dripping down his chin. Helpless fury boiled in his veins. He was beyond fed up with them, with everything. His body was broken, courtesy of the fucking assholes over him, his mind hurt under their gazes and his head was splitting in two, a pounding headache in his temples and behind his eyes. And they still didn't make any sense! 

"Stop talking in fucking riddles! What do you mean?" 

They were silent for a single heartbeat. Freddy felt as if they were _grinning_ at him.

_We gave you the power to go free, to leave this place, you had it all the time. You could have left at every moment. **You** did not **want** to. You choose to hide instead... and you can't even acknowledge it. It is almost amusing, this pathetic denial, the way you lie to us and to yourself when we can see right into your soul, into your very heart~_

Freddy swallowed hard. That was not true. That was not-

"You're lying to me," his voice was hoarse and the boiler room started to spin. Their fucking grin grew in front of him, way too many teeth splitting apart like a crescent moon, and he felt an unbearable pressure on his chest, "I did not hide! From what? I would never- I tried to leave-"

They cocked their head. Their gaze was pierching.

_No. You are **afraid**. You can deny it all you want but your mind is screaming, revolting, fighting us. You reject the powers we gave you, your very soul is trying to crawl away. Our hold over you is breaking. But you forget that you gave us your word. Your body, mind and soul. We **will** remind you~_

Their grip on his jaw turned brutal and they pulled him up over the stairs, the metal scraping against his back. Freddy couldn't surpress a gasp of agony when his whole body was jostled and set aflame again. Their voices growled into his ear.

_ **We will pin you like a worm and watch you squirm~** _

They shock him. Sharp claws ripped his hand away and burrowed into the wound in his side. 

Freddy screamed. His voice gave out, vision closing in. He could feel their claws moving under his skin, in his flesh, just below his rips. He was trembling uncontrollably, lurching and convulsing, but there was no escape. This was pure agony. He tried to push them away but it was like trying to grasp fog, their form not corporal if they did not want to. He hissed and spat at them, sharp teeth bared. 

"I am not afraid!" Freddy snarled, snapping like a dog with rabies, foaming at the mouth, "I never was! Let me go, you fucking-"

_Oh, you are. You are **terryfied**. Terryfied of what you have become~_

The air between them started to simmer and they changed, a sneering face looking down at him. A face he knew. It was himself, before he had been burned, pale blue eyes sparkling with sadistic amusement.

_Son of a hundred maniacs... You always knew what kind of monster you were, your whole life. And what kind of monster you could become~_

His old face melted away. Now it was a little girl, a blonde, petite thing with pony-tails. He knew her, by god, he knew her even though he could not remember her name, but seeing her face again was like a punch to the stomach. A memory blistered against the inside of his skull, the memory of himself, how he had cut her throat. How he had given in to the urge, for the very first time, mechanical and detached, his hands steered as if on auto-pilot. Her screams echoing into the void. And their voices, whispering in his ear. There had been so much blood on his hands. The face started to change rapidly, dozens of children, all smiling at him with malicious grins and glittering eyes.

_You liked to cause harm, to maim, to hurt, you enjoyed it and you were addicted to the red haze. You wanted to kill but so deep down it terryfied you. You were repressed by your own pathetic fear and whatever shred of morality you were clinging to in your depraved heart. But you wanted. You wanted...~_

The face changed again, one last time. It was no child Freddy remembered. Beady, little eyes filled with hatred and disgust stared at him instead. The nauseating stench of alcohol filled his nostrils. No. No, no, no. 

_The nightmare you were living in was turning you into a nightmare of your own and you refused it, fought it with all your might. It crushed you, destroyed you. You could feel it. You knew it, back then, and yet you were too afraid to give in to what you were, what you could be. You would have continued to wither away until the old pervert would have had enough and eventually strangled you in a drunken fit of rage. You were **nothing**! But we... we set you free~_

"Get off! I killed you, I _killed_ you!"

Panic, blinding and horrifying flooded his mind. This man- he was touching him- he had killed him-

"Get off me!"

He was screeching uncomprehendingly, unable to control his voice. The pain was forgotten, overriden by the all-consuming need to just _get away_, trashing violently, but their claws bored even deeper into his body, holding him in place. He ripped himself apart and he did not care. Even death would have been better than to spend even another moment like this, with this man, this _animal_, above him.

_We saved you. We gave you your strength. We molded you into the monster you were always destined to be. And this is how you repay us in the end? With insolence and your pathetic weakness when we thought we had burned it out of you decades ago?~_

What little strength he had left was waning. Freddy couldn't fight anymore. He was so exhausted, his whole body, his mind burned out completely. His legs refused to corporate, the wound in his side numbing him from the waist down and his head felt ready to explode, flash after flash of agony cutting into his brain. 

_No. This is unacceptable. We will strip you down and pick you to pieces until you remember your oath, until you comply and all of that nonsensical sentiment is burned away from your subconciousness. Until you are ours again. And if not...~_

The claws in his side constriced when they shoved them deeper into his flesh. Freddy couldn't even scream anymore, choking on his own blood.

_We told you we can find another~_

The world was suddenly shifting around them. Flames cackled in the background, spitting and hissing angrily.  
Freddy slowly opened eyes that he could not remember closing and the dreaded, the hated face was gone. They were not looking at him anymore, but had their head cocked to the side.

He followed their gaze and through a blurr of tears he would never in his life admit to he saw a familiar figure standing there, next to the burning boiler. 

_And there **you** are~_

Freddys' eyes widened in a total lack of comprehension. That could not be. That was impossible. What in the blazing hell was _he_ doing here?

_Welcome, revenant~_

•••


	11. Chapter 11

Jason had to close his eyes.

Heat blasted into his face, through the holes in his mask, the hard plastic bearing the brunt of the force as a wall of flames unleashed in front of him. Jason recognized it immediately. It was the barrier from the dreams, but this was no dream, no nightmare, this was real, a blazing inferno that roared at him like a dangerous, rabid animal. And it wanted to keep him out.

The tall man grit his teeth. He would not be stopped like this. He would not go back. There was nothing to return to for him. And he had crossed over in the dreams more than once before.

Jason walked into the fire. It was painful, pulling and tearing, but it weren't the flames that hurt him. It was the transition, from the dark, decrepit room that had gone up in flames a long time ago in the real world to another, very different place that had never stopped burning. He moved on, unimpressed and past the point of caring. He knew he could do it. He had to confront whatever waited for him.

When he reached the other side, he was unscathed and the uproar of flames fell silent in an instant, replaced by a damp, unnatural silence. The only thing he could hear was the incorporeal beating, louder than ever before. Jason slowly looked up again.

But no dead memories greeted him. Nor the polished mirror of a lakes' surface.

He found himself in a hellish, red room, the ceiling so high that there could very well not even be one. A single, enormous boiler hung suspended by hundreds of pipes that vanished into the darkness, spewing hot steam and fire. A flurry of ash and rust descended from somewhere above him, falling on his shoulders in thick flakes and the air smelled overwhelmingly of burnt matches. And he knew he had been here before, in this realm, wherever this place was. 

_And there **you** are~_

Jasons' head snapped towards the voices, staring through the heat and the ash, across the red room.

_Welcome, revenant~_

They were a shimmering, glistening apparition about thirty feet away from him, at the end of a staircase, shifting and moving constantly. It almost looked like the hot air that flickered over a campfire at night, just a whiff of almost invisible, white smoke, without legs or arms or a face. And yet, Jason knew they were looking at him. He could feel it.

Something moved behind them and only now did he notice the dark, prone form at the bottom of the stairs.  
Jason took an abortive step forward without realizing it.

Freddy looked not so different from the very last moment they had seen each other in person, when they had fought at the lake so long ago, but unlike then, it had not been Jason himself who had done the excessive damage this time. 

The burnt man was lying in a puddle of blood, bleeding from several gaping wounds. He looked like a crippled bird that had tangled itself in a thorn bush and managed to break its own wings in a desperate attempt to escape, a disheveled, torn up thing that would be better off if one just snapped its neck in an act of mercy. Freddy was staring in his direction, blood running into his eyes from lacerations on his forehead. There was painful confusion written all over his sneering visage.

Jason cocked his head, the feeling mutual. This... was not what he had been expecting. A hollow laugh had him snap his head up to the voices again.

_So we could not keep you away in the end, tumbling into the flame like a suicidal moth. But maybe we should not have expected anything else. After all, there are no barriers for you anymore, are there, dreamwalker?~_

The translucent thing where the voices sounded from seemed to stretch in the steam-filled air, rising menacingly to what seemed to be its full height, towering over Jason by at least a few heads. It started towards him, gliding and flowing slowly across the boiler room, coming closer.

Jason lifted his weapon. 

It laughed snidely again, the sound reverbrating in his skull.

_None of that nonsense~_

The entity shuddered in itself and then the machete was ripped from his fingers, flying across the room to pierce itself into a concrete wall. Jason stared after it, brows furrowing under the mask. He really should have expected that. Freddy had done almost the same the last time he had been here.

"What the hell is _he_ doing here?!" 

Speaking of which. The burnt man had slowly propped himself up on his ellbow, pulling himself into a half sitting, half lying position against the metal staircase, his thin shoulders heaving from the effort. He sneered at Jason, baring his bloodied teeth in obvious rage.

_You called him~_

"I... _what_?!" Freddy snarled, "I did not fucking call anybody and especially not him!" 

The entity was silent for a moment. Then it chuckled, _Oh, this could almost be endearing, if it wouldn't emphazise your miserable shortcomings even more. You **really** don't realize what you did... The last time he was here~_

"What are you talking about?" Freddy hissed through clenched teeth and the entity answered, but instead of their own gravely tone it spoke in Freddys' voice, a mocking impersonation, and Jason felt the familiar, sharp pain tear through his left temple at their words.

_ **Let's see what really scares you. And dig a little deeper~** _

It was a blade that bored into his head, into his brain, and it hurt so much, his vision flashing. He saw himself through Freddys' eyes, a small child crying on the floor, his trembling form plunged in garish green light. Another flash and a long, razor-sharp knife was held to his temple, piercing through his skull. Jason stumbled back, almost losing his balance. 

_Oh, yes, you dug deep, too deep. He is more than a mere mortal, though, this broken, tortured soul that spawned from insanity to descend its rotten shell, and you should have known better. But your foolish, arrogant desire to manipulate him blinded you. And you didn't even notice that a part of yourself got stuck in his black morasses. And a part of him in you, tangled up like a fly caught in a spiders' net~_

Jason tried to keep his focus through flashes of pain, the knife in his head twisting brutally. The entity was coming closer, flickering almost within arms reach. 

_And like a festering abscess it grew. In both of your minds, without any of you even knowing~_

He was almost backed up against the wall. It was lined with rusted metal pipes and iron bars, leading up into the darkness. 

_Who knows... maybe, whatever this connection is between you two, it helped fueling that pesky spark of defiance in you. It certainly helped **him** develop the ability to enter the dreams...~_

Jason turned, grasped a rod that looked sturdy enough and pulled. The metal broke off in a decent sized chunk. He wasted no time and plunged it into the entity. Instead of impaling it, though, the rod slid through the glimmering, fog-like thing like water through his fingers, clattering to the ground. 

The creature shuddered on the spot, an ominous growling sounding from deep within it.

Before he knew what had happened, Jason was swept off his feet by an invisible force and he crashed into the concrete wall behind him. His skull cracked on impact and he fell to the floor in a heap, groaning under his breath. 

_Now, don't be like that, revenant. We told you there is no way for you to kill us. We told you, the only thing waiting for you here is your own demise~_

He was grasped by something thick and unseeable that curled around his chest and lifted him up into the air. Jason fought against the hold, kicking and trying to pry it loose but whatever it was, it would not let him go and he was unable to grasp it, his hands sliding through the shimmering smoke. He groaned when whatever was grasping him started to squeeze, his ribcage and his spine cracking under the pressure and he looked up into the entity. Something moved in the swirling mass, something that did not want to be seen. Or maybe _could_ simply not be seen. 

_And that your soul would be ours~_

The pressure intensified and his strength was waning. Jason heard his ribs break, a hollow, crunching sound. Something touched the ridge of his mask, trying to slip under, and he jerked his head away as far as he could but they would not stop, trying to pry it loose. He could feel the invisible things in the creature staring at him. They were ravenous.

_You could be our new nightmare... So devastatingly empty on the inside already, we wouldn't even need your consent~_

There was a sudden explosion above them, a shower of sparks raining down. Steam hissed from broken pipes, dirty water cascading in hot sprays to the ground. The concrete walls groaned menacingly around them.

"No!"

Through the translucent entity Jason could see Freddy, somehow standing on shaking legs. His eyes were burning, spewing pure hatred and glowing with a last shadow of the powers he had held over this place, this world. The burnt man looked ready to collapse, too injured to even be standing but too stubborn, too enraged to realize it. Freddy bared his teeth, snarling, "You will not replace me with this retarded mutt!"

_And why not? You broke the oath, you choose to rot here instead of collecting the souls for us. Even if you didn't do it knowingly, we have no use for a coward like yourself who is haunted by his own nightmares~_

"You fucking, arrogant snakes! I am not haunted, by _nothing_, you hear me? I don't give a fuck about what you say! And I _never_ swore an oath to you, you bastards!" Freddy took a trembling step forward and slowly, painfully, raised his claws. The hand, the whole arm was mangled, white shards of bone peaking through the blood-soaked sweater, the red liquid dripping from the ellbow. Jason highly doubted that he could fight like this, let alone do any harm to the intangible creature.

_Your talent for denial is truly impressive... Did you really think we gave you your powers out of the kindness of our hearts? That we would expect nothing in return? You fool~_

Freddy was punched by an invisible force and he crashed back into the railing of the staircase violently before crumbling to the ground. The entity turned, with Jason still suspended in the air, and slowly glided over to the burnt man. 

_But maybe... we can still use you. You gave us your word, after all, and you served us well for many years. We just have to make you forget that what caused you to hide like a rat in a sewer, those pesky, fragmented memories that scratch at the surface of your consciousness~_

The creature lifted Freddy up, too. The bleeding, injured body twisted in the air and the burnt man hissed in pain, a small, defeated sound. He wasn't even opening his eyes anymore, broken limbs suspended like a puppet on a string.

_Or maybe we should simply take you both. Burn both of your minds to ashes, burn any and all of your former selfes away. Every last remnant of you. Everything. Two empty shells, two dreamwalkers, two nightmares to reap the living for us...~_

Jason tasted warm iron on his tongue when the pressure on his torso became unbearable, his vision turning dark around the edges. Several more of his ribs cracked and vaguely, he heard Freddy cry out, muffled by the rush of blood in his ears. The cherished and now empty place in his chest were his mother had always been filled with black tendrils, a dark, poisonous mass that gorged itself on his mind, on his body, burning and searing along every single neuron and synapse. He looked up into the entity with glassy eyes and saw _them_ staring at him from empty eyesockets, grinning, grinning with too many teeth, so very hungry, while he started to forget. 

He jerked, trying desperately to hang on, to remember, but it slipped away from him, going up in flames like old, dry paper that someone had held too close to a fire. The camp, his mother, even his own name, started to turn to dead ashes. His vision went black.

_Jason..._

The name cut through the darkness. A confused sound burst forth from the back of his throat. 

_Jason!_

He remembered...

Seemingly from nowhere, a blinding, white light ignited, plunging the whole red room in a brilliant glare. The voices cried out in dismay, slobbering with pain. The hold around him loosened, the black tendrils retreating so fast it hurt, and then the entity vanished altogether. Jason hit the ground hard and he could hear Freddy fall down heavily next to him. Confused, he shock his head to clear it and pushed himself up on his ellbows. 

He looked up. And startled badly.

His mother was standing above him, between himself and the creature. She was holding his machete, the blade raised for a strike. She was whole, completely unblemished and she was no imitation, by no one. She was real.

"Keep your filthy claws off of my son, you _disgusting_ creatures!"

The entity curled and squirmed in the air in front of them. It was swirling fast and the voices sounded shocked, _You! That cannot be. We caught you. We **devoured** you!~_

His mother spoke through clenched teeth, and oh, Jason knew she was so, so very angry, "You wish you did! Back off!"

The white light turned even brighter, if that was even possible, and the voices snarled in pain again and retreated further, the translucent fog curling in on itself in distress.

His mother turned around. 

Jason heard a low whine coming from inside himself. He stood without really realizing that he had moved, his broad chest heaving. 

She was _here_. Right in front of him.

His mother looked up at him. He could remember being the one who had to look up to see into her eyes, a long, long time ago. But right now, he felt the same as he had then. A small boy who just wanted his mother to hold him and tell him everything would be alright. And she knew. She took two steps towards him and embraced him. Jason had to lean down to bury his masked face in her neck. He returned the embrace, at peace for the first time in what felt like forever.

"I am so sorry, sweetheart," she said, "I never wanted to leave you. You told me about the nightmares and I just wanted to take a look, to see what this was about. And then they trapped me here and thought they could keep me away from you, those vile beasts!" 

Jason only listened with half an ear. She was here, with him. He did not care about anything else. She was _real_, she was embracing him and this right here, this was everything he had ever wanted since the day he had drowned in the cold waters of the lake. He never wanted to let go again. 

But she leaned back way too soon for him, holding his face in her hand so he had to look at her. She had a concerned frown on her face and her tone was urgent, "Jason, you have to listen to me. There is not much time. I saw what they wanted to do to you, turn you into a mindless, soulless beast for them. I will _not_ let that happen. I will try to... I... I don't know if I can stop them. _He_ is the key."

She pointed at Freddy. The burnt man was lying still next to them, broken and twisted. He hadn't moved an inch since he had fallen, seemingly unconscious.

"He was the one who brought them here and he is the only one who can end them. He allowed them entrance, he has to remember. You _have_ to make him remember or they will never go away, they will never leave you alone," she said and then her worried frown changed into a warm smile. 

"I love you, my baby, my Jason," she caressed his masked cheek. Her eyes were shimmering in the red light, "So very much. Never forget that. You always were the only thing in this disgusting, foul world that I really, truly loved."

She leaned up and kissed him, the mask, on the forehead. Jason stared into her eyes. He understood, he did, and he wanted to tell her but his throat was constricting. Why did she sound like she was saying goodbye?

The white light dimmed around them, homing in on her alone. An inhuman cry sounded behind his mother. The red room around them flared up again but it crumbled, groaning like an injured, living thing, the concrete walls splintering in large cracks and metal pipes bursting with steam and fire. The entity rose up again, storming menacingly.

_A mothers' love. How very beautiful~_ The voices spat in disgust and then their glistening form rose up in the air, blood-red light illuminating the swirling mass, _We will **rip** you apart right in front of him!~_

"No, you won't!" His mother let go of him. Jason wanted to step in front of her, to protect her from the voices, but she stopped him with a hand on his chest, "Hurry. You have to get out. And him, too. They will come back and he has to remember!"

Jason stared at her, begging her with his gaze that this could not be. But she was smiling. She held out his machete for him. The white light illuminated her like a halo, burning so very brightly. A tear rolled down her cheek and she gently pushed him back, "I will always be with you. Don't forget that, Jason."

No. He would not leave her here. Never.

"Go," she said softly and her smile was so warm, "Listen to your mother, Jason. One last time."

He closed his eyes. His chest felt as if it would burst and he himself with it, breaking into thousand little pieces, scathering into black nothingness. But he would always listen to her.

He took the weapon from her hand, turned and grabbed the bleeding, broken form on the ground.

_**No! You cannot leave!~**_ The voices roared behind him, rust and ash rushing down from above in a whirlwind. The ground shock under them, the whole plane shattering. The huge boiler groaned above them, the dull beating fast and loud, metal bursting at the seams. Sparks and fire rained down in a flurry.

"You wanted a soul. You can have mine!" his mother said and she stepped towards the entity, the white light glowing around her, "And wherever I go, _I will take you bastards with me._"

Jason felt the barrier in front of him but it was no wall of fire this time, just an invisible veil in reality, thin as a sheet of paper. He walked towards it, Freddy a deadweight over his shoulder, and stopped. His hand that held the machete was trembling. He turned back, for just a moment, but he couldn't see her anymore, nor the entity or the red room. In their place the white light imploded in itself in an eerie silence, the brightness blinding. He averted his gaze. And walked through the barrier, through the sheer devastation in his chest that wanted to tear him asunder.

It was just a single step that took them out to the other side.

The red light died behind him. And after that, the white light, slowly giving way to the dim twilight of a new morning, a faint hue that fell through broken windows. Jason closed his eyes. 

The beating had stopped.

•••


End file.
